Style and substance with tennis hotshot Yayuk

JAKARTA (JP): Yayuk Basuki may have been the last of a dying breed of tennis players with a style so natural and fluid that it leaves others in awe.

The Indonesian tennis number one was blessed with the natural gift to do almost anything on the court, from hitting beautiful, flowing groundstrokes, including a pounding forehand, to plucking the ball out of the air and placing it deftly beyond her opponent's reach. Although relatively short (164 cm) among the towering women in tennis today, at her peak she had one of the fastest services in the game.

As the teenage baseline battalion took over women's tennis in the last 10 years, Yayuk's all-court play stood out as a curious anomaly. It was beautiful to behold on a good day, but her finely tuned game could also descend into fits and jerks, dissolving in a string of errors and flubbed chances.

Yayuk learned the game from her policeman father and was recognized as a prodigy. Although she first played for her home province at the age of 11 in the National Games (PON), she was a relative latecomer to the international circuit at the age of 20 (Tracy Austin, Jennifer Capriati and Martina Hingis were already playing major tournaments at the age of 14).

She made up for lost time by quickly breaking into the top 50 in the world in singles in 1992 and also earned a reputation as a leading doubles player. She chalked up impressive wins over some of the game's top players -- Anke Huber, Lindsay Davenport, Iva Majoli, Mary Jo Fernandez, Hingis, Natalie Tauziat, Zina Garrison --, won several tournaments, reached a career-high ranking of 19 and accrued about US$1.5 million in prize money alone.

Her achievements are even more impressive when one considers that she hails from a distant backwater in a sport where players from wealthy nations have traditionally ruled supreme.

Married to her coach Suharyadi, Yayuk gave birth to a son last September and is now semiretired. However, she returned to Wimbledon in July, reaching the third round of the singles before losing to Capriati after leading in the first set. She will also team up with Wynne Prakusya in the doubles in Sydney.

As well as her many fans (there are at least two unofficial websites devoted to her) she was popular among her peers. She twice received the year-end award for sportsmanship, which is voted on by players.

Yayuk, who will turn 30 in November, took time out from training to discuss the ups and downs of her career, life on the women's circuit and her hopes for Indonesian tennis. The following is an excerpt:

Question: You moved at quite a young age from Yogyakarta to Jakarta for national training. Was the separation from your family difficult?

Answer: I was about 13. I was sent to the national sports school in Ragunan because in Yogyakarta I didn't have any suitable sparring (practice) partners. The school was not only for tennis, but for other sports, too. I was already the national junior tennis champion in Malang (East Java). A national coach, Ibu Mien Gondowijojo, had seen me play when I was 11 at the National Games in Jakarta and thought I was talented. My sister (Yayuk is the youngest of five children) was already at the school and Ibu Mien asked her if I was interested in going there.

It was not that difficult, no. My sister was there and my mother visited every month. After a while you get used to it. You find friends, the things that make you comfortable.

Q: That probably helped you on the professional tour. It seems you do not seem ashamed when attention is on you, unlike other Indonesians in sports, like badminton players...

A: I think badminton is probably a good example. There is a feeling of inferiority among some of them. They go to tournaments as a group, they don't do much socializing with others. When there is a news conference, their coaches do all the talking, which does not educate them about dealing with others. I am a total professional and I handle everything myself. If I see I am playing a Swiss player, then I think to myself I really want to beat her, I want to show her how good I am. Maybe other players will see the draw and think, 'oh no, I'm playing someone from Switzerland' and they've lost before they go onto the court. When I was pregnant, I was helping a few girls with coaching and I tried to teach them to go up to other players, talk to them, socialize, so they can learn.

Q: You had a foreign coach, Jiri Waters, at the outset of your professional career and a private sponsor. Do you think you could have made it to the top without those advantages?

A: That's tough to say, because I was already at a peak, I had already won a gold at the Asian Games, so he only brought me over to the next level. I was part of Pelita Jaya tennis club, which was under Aburizal Bakrie. I signed a contract with him and I received $150,000 a year to cover traveling expenses. As for the coach, there had already been a couple of foreign coaches for the club, and I think Jiri was the second, but he wasn't really suitable for the others. So I talked to Aburizal privately and asked if it would be possible for Jiri to be my private coach ...

Jiri is Czech, and they are supposed to be a hard people and they can be standoffish; I saw that for myself with a lot of the Czech players on the circuit. But Jiri is a very nice man. He could adjust as a coach, as a friend, as a father. It wasn't that I needed a super-top coach, but someone with an understanding character ...

I was already good at 16 or 17, but I was only focused on preparing for multisport events, like the Asian Games. So I would participate in tournaments before those events, usually about six, and then go home to the usual routine. So when I had the opportunity with the sponsor, I used it to get my career going. I didn't waste it. I can thank Aburizal for his help in making me a professional.

Q: Does it make you angry when people say you were so talented that you should have made it to the top 10? Or the backhanded compliment that sometimes you didn't know which shot to hit because you had so many to choose from?

A: No, I don't get angry. I know I have great natural talent. People would tell me that I played like Evonne Goolagong (Cawley) and Bettina Bunge (a German top-10 player in the early 1980s). But they would say that there were a lot of matches I should have won but I lost. I learned a lot from those matches, and in the last few years I became a better player for it. I became more consistent and I thought more about my shots.

I was unlucky in some ways. In 1997, I was in the running for the Chase Championships (the end-of-year women's championships for the top 16 players). I was 17th when I went to Tokyo and had seven match points against Aranxta (Sanchez-Vicario) in the semifinal, and I still lost. It was not that I played bad, or that I choked, but she played better. That is what the top players do; when they are down, they lift their game. It doesn't matter if it is a match point or not, they treat every point the same...

Q: Do you ever think that if you had pulled out that win against Sanchez-Vicario, it might have changed your career, in ending a mental block in facing the top players?

A: Perhaps, but people have to realize there is such a big difference between number 20 in the world and being in the top 10. If you travel around the world, you see so many talented players who never make it to the top 20, let alone the top 10. Tennis is 75 percent mental and 25 percent about technique. I beat a lot of top players, but always in the early rounds. They get so much tougher with every match. That is why I respect Steffi (Graf) so much. With everything going on in her personal life, she could still come out and win.

Q: Tennis players earn such fantastic sums. Do you feel guilty when you think about what you have made compared to what most other Indonesians earn?

A: Well, I think I deserve it. I have been doing this since I was small, and it's impossible to count how much my parents spent on me when I was a child. There were a lot of sacrifices, but I have been able to make my living from this sport. I have a friend who used to be the top in her sport, but now she has nothing. I feel sorry for her, but there are many other athletes like her. It's because the government trains them to compete for the country -- that's what the government needs them for -- but it's about that moment in time. There is nothing for the future.

Q: Who was the greatest player you played?

A: Seles, before she was stabbed, because it was so tough just to win points off her. With Steffi, you could always hit a little to her backhand and get a game, and Martina (Navratilova) was pure serve-and-volley, so sometimes there was a chance. But Seles hits two-handed off both sides, and her concentration was incredible.

Q: Tauziat has come out with a tell-all book which has offended a lot of players with its tales of bitchiness and lesbianism on the circuit...

A: It wasn't like that for me. As for lesbians, that is not a problem for me. I have a husband, a family, but some of them are my friends, my good friends... We'll talk about problems, and they will tell me what is going on in their lives. Like a top European player who has problems in her relationship, and we can talk about it. Actually, I'm glad I learned about this part of life so I know what it is and can be more open.

Q: You have had some public spats with the Indonesian Tennis Association (Pelti), including when they canceled your planned exhibition with Graf because they said it was not beneficial to Indonesian tennis. What do you think the association needs to do to help the next generation of Yayuks?

A: About Steffi, I wanted her to come here so people could see her play live, instead of only watching her on television. But it was canceled because a then top Pelti official thought his percentage was too small! Pelti should be helping our tennis, but often it's restricting its development. It needs to have people -- former players, people who care about the game -- helping it, not people who are thinking of personal or political interests...

Q: You said you are semiretired, but there were several players, like Cawley, who came back stronger after having a child...

A: It's not the physical part -- I actually felt as strong as usual when I played Fed Cup a few months after giving birth -- but the mental. Now I have to think about my son, so my thoughts are not 100 percent on my tennis.

Q: What were your greatest moments in tennis?

A: Beating Iva Majoli in 1997 is among them, because she had won the French Open earlier in the year. And reaching the Wimbledon quarterfinals in 1997, because I was only the second Asian woman to do that (Japan's Kimiko Date was the first). Also winning the Asian Games singles gold in 1998, because my career was already going down. -- Bruce Emond